The present disclosure relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly, to methods and apparatuses for serving cell change management in a wireless communication system.
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various telecommunication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, and broadcasts. Typical wireless communication systems may employ multiple-access technologies capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing available system resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access technologies include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems, and time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) systems.
These multiple access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. An example of an emerging telecommunication standard is Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile standard promulgated by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). It is designed to better support mobile broadband Internet access by improving spectral efficiency, lower costs, improve services, make use of new spectrum, and better integrate with other open standards using OFDMA on the downlink (DL), SC-FDMA on the uplink (UL), and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology. However, as the demand for mobile broadband access continues to increase, there exists a need for further improvements in LTE technology. Preferably, these improvements should be applicable to other multi-access technologies and the telecommunication standards that employ these technologies.
Currently, when a user equipment (UE) is located in a coverage area of a macro cell and a low power cell (e.g., femto cell, micro cell, Home eNodeB (HeNB), Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) cell), the UE must select (or reselect to) the low power cell for wireless service. However, when the UE is moving at a relatively fast rate of speed, handover to the low power cell can quickly trigger a subsequent reselection to the macro cell because the UE exits the coverage area of the low power cell after a short time.
As such, improvements in cell reselection and handover based on UE speed are needed to optimize user experience and minimize unnecessary serving cell changes.